Betaware or just “Beta” is a nickname for software or WebApps which has passed the alpha testing stage of development and has been released to a limited amount of users for software testing before its official release. Beta testing allows the software to undergo usability testing with users who provide feedback. So that if any malfunctions are found by these users they can be reported to the developers and fixed. Beta software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss.

According to tradition, in a “beta” phase, software or WebApps should fail to pick up any major features, and should mostly be going through community testing to work out kinks and bugs.

But it was found out by one wise writer at the Pingdom blog that 22 of 49 Google’s public products that is 45 percent of the products were listed as “beta,” in spite of going through major feature changes and even changes in the entire version.

You must have noticed that famous Gmail is also in Beta stage. Even Google Docs and Orkut are in the Beta stage. Though these are in the web sphere from the past 4 years they are still in the Beta Phase. Some of the other Google products that are in Beta stage are GoogleTalk, Google Chrome, Custom Search, Google Docs, Google Pack etc.

One of the Google spokesmen told that the word Beta is a bit different for WebApps, where people expect continual improvements in a product. So Google is bringing many changes to all it’s products?